The "Big Mercedes" 1937

Walter Gotschke

This color woodengraving was part of a portfolio of six classic car images engraved by Walter Gotschke, commissioned by Mercedes Benz in the 1960s and printed in West Germany. Each portfolio came with a perforated sheet of cards with identifying information on each car to paste on the back of the frame. The cover page read:

"The history of Daimler-Benz is the history of the Automobile. It began with the high speed Daimler engine completed in 1883 and/ the Daimler and Benz cars of 1886. In almost 75 years since those exciting first steps to motoring, Daimler-Benz has produced many/ types of production and racing cars. In their day, all have been acclaimed leaders in technical development and styling and all/ are milestones on the road of progress in automobile engineering to the superb motor car of today. The pages of this folder/ illustrate some of the landmarks in the history of the world's oldest automobile manufacturers: Benz "Velo" 1894, "Mercedes" 1902,/ Mercedes-Benz Type "K" 1927, Mercedes-Benz Supercharged Sports car 1928, Mercedes-Benz "Mannheim Sport 370 S" 1930, The "Big Mercedes" 1937. This review of the past is not solely of informative nature, but a true work of art. The illustrations are wood/ engravings. This art, mastered by very few today, was developed around 1800. Before that, over 1000 years ago the Chinese had/ developed the art of wood-cuts which lent themselves to impressive illustrations but lacked the fine detail of wood engravings."